Posts Discussing Country Music

Show Review: Jason Isbell at the Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA. (8/13/15)

Show Review: Stagecoach 2015 (4/28/15)

Show Review: Way Over Yonder Fest Day 1 (9/27/14)

Museum Review: Country Music Hall of Fame (5/21/14)

Stagecoach 2014:  Of beer, trucks & cut-offs and the sublime (4/28/14)

Book Review Meeting Jimmie Rodgers by Barry Mazor (4/15/14)

Book Review: The Roots of Texas Music edited by Lawrence Clayton and Joe Specht (9/13/11)

Show Review: Willie Nelson's Country Showdown (6/24/11)

12 Hrs in Bakersfield California (5/31/11)

Buck Owens and the Bakersfield Sound (5/23/11)

Movie Review: Earl Scruggs- Bluegrass Legend (7/27/10)

Book Review: That Selling Sound by Diane Pecknold (6/5/10)

Book Review: Screamin' Jay Hawkins All Time Hits by Mark Binelli

Screamin' Jay Hawkins All Time Hitts by Mark Binelli comes out on May 3rd 2016,.

Book Review:
Screamin' Jay Hawkins All Time Hits
by Mark Binelli
Metropolitan Books
Published May 3rd, 2016
(AMAZON BUY LINK)



  Author Mark Binelli writes both fiction and non-fiction.  He published a novel, Sacco and Vincetti Must Die, back in 2002.  In 2006 Detroit City is the Place to Be, a work of non-fiction about his hometown, was published.  In between he's contributed articles to Rolling Stone, where he is a contributing editor, and other publications.

  Screamin' Jay Hawkins All Time Hits treads the line between "creative non-fiction" and regular old literary fiction with a healthy contribution from the well known 33 1/3 series of books about specific albums and musicians.  Binelli has written an account of the life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the fifties rocker who is immortal for his hit, I Put a Spell On You.   Hawkins was also in on the ground floor of the mid 50s rock explosion, touring on one of the many package tours put together by radio DJ Alan Freed.

   Anyone with even a passing interest in the 33 1/3 series, early rock history or the idea of "creative non fiction" as a rival to traditional literature is likely to find much to like.  Those more accustomed to a traditional novel may not be as responsive, though it's hard to say that this novel doesn't succeed in exactly what it wants to do.  The only possible complaint might be lack of ambition, but it's not a complaint I would make.

   Screamin' Jay Hawkins All Time Hits is certain to find shelf space in independent book stores all over the country.  Just the title alone should be good for decent sales from people who are browsing at their favorite book store down the street.

Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist by Hazel V. Canby

Francis Harper, the first African American female novelist.

Book Review
Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist
by Hazel V. Canby
p. 1987
Oxford University Press

   Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist, traces the origins of novels written by African American authors prior to the breakthrough of Zora Hurston in the 1930s, and Alice Walker and Toni Morrison after that.   Two of the books discussed, Nella Larsen's Passing and Uncle Tom's Cabin (not written by an African-American) have been discussed here as part of the 1001 Books Project.  Others were wholly unfamiliar to me because they have failed to become "classics" and are therefore not taught or discussed with any regularity.

  Two major authors in this book with whom I was previously unacquainted are Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.  Hopkins, in particular, wrote a great deal of fiction while she was editrix of a Boston-based African-American literary magazine in the first few years of the 20th century.  Harper's primary work is Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), generally called the first full length novel by an African-American female writer.  Hopkins wrote several novels, but three of these were only published in her magazine and never as stand alone editions.  Her stand alone novel was Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900).

 Canby is particularly forceful in arguing for the canonical inclusion of Iola Leroy and Contending Forces.  She also advocates for Larsen's two 1001 Books inclusions: Passing and Quicksand.  It was in fact, those two novels which spurred me to read this book, to perhaps see if there were other "lost classics" out there.  Canby didn't quite convince me, but I'm sure that her analysis would come as a revelation to anyone interested in the field of African-American studies.

  Her prose is somewhat studded with the archaism's of late 20th century deconstructionist literary critics, always regrettable, but here the academic blah blah is outweighed by the usefulness of her discussion about these little known (to me) texts and authors,

Book Review: The Luminaries by Elanor Catton

Book Review:
The Luminaries
by Elanor Catton
Little, Brown and Company, published October 15th, 2013


   The 1001 Books to Read Before You Die edition I own stops in 2005.  That is almost a decade of reading to account for.  The Luminaries caught my eye as the type of book editors might select based on it being a winner of the Man Booker Prize, and written by a 20 something author, who is female and is also from New Zealand.  If there is one thing I've learned from the 1001 Books series is that they are looking to incorporate diverse viewpoints in terms of race, gender and ethnicity.   The Luminaries is essentially an old-west detective story, set on the west coast of New Zealand in the 1860s.

   The detective novel itself was not invented, but popularized in 1868 by The Moonstone, written by Wilkie Collins.  Collins was a cohort of Charles Dickens and very much immersed in the same milieu: The Moonstone was published in serial form first, and bears many of the characteristics of the writing of that period: long digressions, a surplus of plot and character and a fondness for the Eastern/ Exotic/Spiritual/Supernatural.
 
    I'm not sure one would have to be familiar with the history of detective and horror fiction in the mid to late Victorian period to fully appreciate Catton's accomplishment, but I think the pull quote on the Amazon.com product page nails it: "Catton has built a lively parody of a 19th-century novel, and in so doing created a novel for the 21st, something utterly new." - New York Times Book Review.

   Thus, if you aren't familiar with this literary genre, you won't appreciate the parodic element of The Luminaries, and might be left with the impression that Catton is writing a straight forward, albeit accomplished, piece of genre fiction.  This world is explored in The Maniac in the Cellar, a book I read back in June- but the gist is that the world of the supernatural and detectives overlapped in the 1860s, and spiritualism was very much en vogue as well.   Thus, The Luminaries manages to avoid any kind of anachronistic plot points while also updating the style of prose to avoid the excesses of the mid 19th century sensationalists.

   The 800 page length might seem excessive, but again, by the standards of the mid 19th century novel, and the sensationalist genre, she has created something that would take well to the serial format of that period, which emphasized length and incident.  In other words she has created something along the lines of the best of both worlds, and done it so subtly that it is entirely possible to buy, read, enjoy, and publicly comment upon The Luminaries without even being aware of that level of development.

  In the sum total, The Luminaries is both a summer beach type page turner and a literary achievement, recalling many of the strengths of the pre-modern novel while incorporating a variety of tips and tricks from the modernist writers and their ilk.

Movie Review & Book Review: JANE EYRE AND VILLETTE

Jane Eyre
2011 FOCUS FEATURES
d. Cary Fukunaga
Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre
Michael Fassbender as Rochchester
based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte


Villette
by Charlotte Bronte
p. 1852
Bantam Classics Edition
w/ introduction by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer


  What's the first rule of adopting a novel by the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen into a movie?  NAIL..THE...LEADS.  I would go so far as to say that a Bronte/Austen joint is only as good as the lead actors.  By that token, Cary Fukunaga (d. of Sin Nombre 2009) really has a good jump out of the gate.  For Jane Eyre he got Mia Wasikowsaka, who was an unfortunate victim in Tim Burton's uninspired Alice in Wonderland.  Victimhood aside, you can see why Burton cast her as Alice and why Fukunaga would leap at the chance to make a 29th version of Jane Eyre: Wasikowsaka is that good.  Likewise, Fassbender is an apt choice as Rochester, and their chemistry, is tangible.


   I've seen critics refer to this version of Eyre as "gothic" but one shouldn't make that reference without mentioning that Bronte's work is steeped in the literary Gothicism of the late 18th and early 19th century.  A most cursory review of the Bronte's biographical details coupled with the time period in which they were forming their writing style, should be sufficient to apprise even the most ignorant modern of the gothicism which is laced throughout the work of ALL the Bronte's. 


  Aside from that, Fukunaga handles the gothic aspect of Jane Eyre as well as can be expected in that he makes a cheesy, clunky back drop come to life through his camera lense.  Jane Eyre is an enduring classic yes, but as a work of literature, it is far eclipsed by Bronte's last work, Villette.  Jane Eyre was published in 1847,  Villette in 1852 and to consider the stories back to back is to see the difference between a young writer trying to establish her place in the literary world by aping convention and a mature, successful writer trying to cement her literary legacy.


   In Fukunaga's Jane Eyre, he does a great job with everything but the very plot devices which make this such an enduring tale.  I.E. the ole crazy wife in the attic plot twist, which is not adequately foreshadowed or anticipated by his straight forward directorial style.  For me, the heart of Jane Eyre is the way that Bronte takes this very Gothic/supernatural scene of the haunted castle and then ties it into the love story between Eyre and Rochester. In that way, the ole crazy lady in the attic is both the most "popular" event in the tale AND the most sophisticated literary device in the novel, and Fukunaga's failure to give a unique spin to that contrast is what prevents this Jane Eyre from being great.  But it is good- and a great date movie.


   After seeing the film I picked up a copy of Villette that my wife has owned since her college days.  The Bantam Classics edition is no Oxford Worlds Classics series edition, but no matter.  You don't need a PHD in 19th century British literature to grasp the appeal of a Bronte Sisters novel- psychological depth of character coupled with precise, realistic observation of scene and social interaction.  In many ways, it's hard to believe that Villette was written  in 1847, so attuned to psychology in a time before psychology was a discipline. (Freud was born nine years after Vilette was published, to give you an idea.)


  I can truly say that the depth of field that Bronte brings to Villette far, far, far surpasses ANY of the 18th century novels I've read in the past two years.  You can clearly see the evolution of the novel as an art form by the progress of psychological sophistication in the protagonist, and by that token, Charlotte Bronte and her sisters represented a real step forward.  It's no wonder their work has proved so enduring over time.

  Here is one thing I wanted to mention: Villette contains a thirty page sequence at the end where Lucy Snowe (main character) is dosed with morphine and instead of sedating her it has an energizing effect, and she basically wanders around time on a heroin high for forty pages.  Not that kind of stuff prim stuff one would expect from a Bronte, and it made me all the more intrigued by the Bronte sisters.  One wonders what experience inspired such a scene.
  




   

Book Review: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim, sociologist

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
by Emile Durkheim
p. 1912
Oxford University Press, USA; 
abridged edition edition (June 15, 2008)


       Is there any shame in reading an abridged version of this book?  Dear lord, I hope not.  You could probably condense the take-away from this book in two sentence:  Society creates religion, communication creates society.  Durkheim was one of the earliest articulators of the principles of "social constructivism," or as morons like to say, "cultural relativism."  
     I would frankly recommend this particular edition of Elementary Forms of Religious Life BECAUSE it's abridged.  Every time I saw the ellipsis [...] indicating that there had been an editing of Durkheim's torturous prose I breathed a tiny sigh of relief.
       That Elementary Forms of Religious Life continues to be relevant today is more a testament to the philosophical introduction and conclusion that place Durkheim squarely in the tradition of Kantian idealist philosophy (actually, squarely opposed to it.)  I find Durkheim's argument that Society can only be analyzed in terms of the relationship between people to be compelling.  I find Durkheims subsidiary claim that such analysis ought to be composed in scientific terms to be much, much, much less compelling.
      Let's face, it the very category of "social sciences" is a  joke because you can't perform scientific experiments with society very well.  Oh, you can do studies proving the obvious ("Fat people watch more tv.")("Poor children are more likely to commit crimes.") till the cows come home but more often then not you will either be stating the obvious, or just wrong.  Durkheim is also methodologically incompetent, choosing to base his observations about indigenous life solely on books that other people wrote.  Durkheim wrote an entire book about the religious life of indigenous Australians, but he appears to have never conversed with one.
    Durkheim probably bears of much of the blame as anyone for the current state of social "science."  Elementary Forms is just as interesting today for the epistemology of early twentieth century social science as it is for anything else, since his observations regarding the underlying human relationships of society have been well and truly observed and expanded upon for the last fifty years.
      In terms of his argument, Durkheim likes to lead with an observation made by a so-called specialist,  then he likes to establish a dichotomy/opposition and then he will describe both sides, and draw conclusions based on his categories and observations.  What he does not do is challenge the technical authorities that he cites, or challenge the idea that religion might not be describable in simple dialectic categories or challenged the idea that you can describe all of world religion based on Australian indigenous religious practices.  In fact, at times you get the distinct impression that he wants to say something about Christianity and/or Judaism but he is scared to challenge Christianity directly.
     Like Max Weber, the other great early 20th century European sociologist/philosopher, Durkheim is seeking to bring some kind of "scientific" rigor to philosophical/historical type observations of society.  It's a move that is grounded in the exponential increase in the need for university professors during that time.  It's easy to see how young professors expounding scientific SOUNDING theories about society behaved would have been attractive to those hiring professors and students alike.  The 20th century was all about "scientific certainty" and later on, about opposing scientific certainty.   Swinging like a pendulum, mirroring the larger recurring philosophical debate between metaphysics and epistemology.  
    Here, in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim actually kind of starts swinging the pendulum, towards the scientific certainty side but at the same time you can see how truly shaky that argument was, right at the beginning.  Time has done his position no favors, but he did outline the debate early on.  That's why this book is more relevant for someone reading about 20th century philosophy then someone seeking to become a sociologist in the 21st century.

Book Reviews: The Road by Cormac McCarthy & Roderick Random by Tobias Smollet

the road


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If there is one thing I've learned from reading several 18th century classics of British literature: The English novel basically owes its existence to Don Quixote by Cervantes. I'm talking about the style of narrative called the "picaresque." You can define it in terms of Don Quixote or in more general terms as, "The English-language term can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road."

The style continues to hold its power: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. On the Road, maybe? It's a style of novel. It's important to focus on the generic forms of novelistic style, because if you happen to be a kick-ass writer like Cormac McCarthy you can set that shit in a post apocalyptic wasteland and forget the punctuation and score a Pulitzer in... 2006. Winner! The Road is in fact being made into a movie as we speak. It could be great like No Country for Old Men, or terrible like "the Postman" a sci-fi variation on the exact same story (but different) that was a decent piece of genre fiction and a TERRIBLE movie starring Kevin Costner.

Roderick Random is an example of the style at the very beginning: It is the anti-hero/hero on the road having adventures. Roderick is a bastard nobel man, raised in Scotland. He's well educated but poor, and he spends the rest of the novel trying to get paid circa 1740 or so. It's a delirious, exhausting ride. It's also four hundred pages long and written in 18th style language.

The Road, on the other hand, is practically a short story. I read it in 2 hours? It won the Pulitzer Prize AND was a pick for Oprah's Book Club in 2007. A film adaptation of the novel is currently in production. It is directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Man and the Boy, respectively. It's a really big deal, in other words.

But it's basically a picaresque focusing on an unnamed protagonist and his son. It's set in a post-apocalyptic version of the south eastern states of the east coast. It is probably the best piece of post apocalyptic literature ever. However it's the way it ties together genre fiction premise with a hallowed literary form and impeccable craftsmanship that makes it a classic.

It's amazing to be talking about two novels with a similar narrative shape that exist three centuries apart. It's pretty cool if you stop and think about it. The form actually influences the way people think about life. Read one, then the other. Post apocalyptic.

That's not to say that Roderick Random lacks any comic chops. The funniest part in the whole book comes at around p. 225 when Doctor Wagtail shows up. (GOOGLE LIBRARY RODERICK RANDOM FULL TEXT) He is a ridiculous fop.

While he thus indulged his own talkative vein, and at the same
time, no doubt, expected a retaliation from me, a young man
entered, dressed in black velvet and an enormous tie-wig, with an
air in which natural levity and affected solemnity were so jumbled
together, that on the whole he appeared a burlesque on all decorum.
This ridiculous oddity danced up to the table at which we sat, and
after a thousand grimaces, asked my friend, by the name of Mr.
Medlar, if we were not engaged on business.

That is the description of a ridiculous fop circa 1740s-50s, whatever. That's modern fashion society nearly three centuries ago. Anyway, the form allows you to explore a wide varieties of events within a single work. It's the kind of story people want to hear. It's as basic as "travelling on a boat." You just take an interesting dude and spool him through a series of locations and interactions. Simple. Both Roderick Random and The Road are excellent examples, separated by time.

left unanswered: What the fuck is a "skull kontrol"?

Be sure to check out the San Diego Union Tribune "Scenemaker" monthly feature with... Skull Kontrol! Yay!

Let's play the MO blind item guessing game:

Start:

Question: What a tool. Speaking of, who's the biggest tool in town right now?

MO: I'll describe him. He wears print hoodies, "DJs" crapola from a laptop, doesn't love music and does what he does for "chicks."

You may post guesses in the comment section. I KNOW who he's talking about- but I ain't talking shit. That doesn't mean anonymous commenters shouldn't' "SPREAD THE HATE."

And, for those of you who are going to cleverly nominate "cat dirt"- I don't know how to dj, and chicks hate me, fyi.

7/7/7 Cat Dirt Presents v. Skull Kontrol @ Beauty Bar San Diego
7/6/7 Cat Dirt Presents Vinyl Radio, Fifty on Their Heels, The Dirty Novels (Albuquerque, New Mexico!) @ The Ken Club